Drone Strikes Are Winning War in Yemen -- for Al-Qaeda

By the Editors -
May 5, 2013

It was a contradiction that perfectly
captured the essence of the U.S. drone war against Islamic
terrorists: Just as we learned that strikes in Yemen had resumed
after a three-month hiatus, a Yemeni journalist gave heart-rending congressional testimony about an attack that killed five
in his village of Wessab.

“The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the
tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also
mine,” Farea al-Muslimi told a Senate judiciary subcommittee on
human rights last month. “The drone strikes are the face of
America to many Yemenis.”

There are good reasons the U.S. has made Yemen a central
front against jihadis: It was where the plot was hatched to blow
up a U.S. jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009 and the base
for the propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen killed in
a drone strike in 2011.

Unfortunately, the effort’s destabilizing effect has given
that divided nation, long the poorest in the Arab world, the
additional distinction of being the most likely to collapse.
That would be both a tragedy for its citizens and a golden
opportunity for al-Qaeda to establish a haven similar to
Afghanistan in the 1990s.

So, what can the wealthy Persian Gulf states, the U.S. and
its allies do to keep Yemen from failing?

For starters, they should rethink the National Dialogue
Conference that began in March in Sana, Yemen’s capital. The
goal was to avert outright secession by Yemen’s south, which was
the independent, socialist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen
before unification in 1990. The conference was foisted on the
Yemenis by neighboring Saudi Arabia -- to whom the U.S. has
outsourced the job of holding Yemen together -- and excluded too
many parties from both south and north.

A poor stepchild to the favored north under the
dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the south would be ill-advised to secede. Given old tribal and regional grudges, the
most likely result would be dissolution into a lawless and
ungovernable mini-Afghanistan. The region would do better
negotiating for increased autonomy and a fairer distribution of
the country’s annual $7.6 billion in oil revenue. Given that 80
percent of oil reserves are in the south, they have a strong
bargaining position.

The Saudis could do far more to facilitate a deal. In an
effort to lower their own unemployment, they have enacted
stricter caps on Yemeni guest workers, and have initiated a wave
of deportations of foreign workers lacking proper papers. This
puts a huge dent in the $4 billion or so that Yemeni workers
remit to their families each year, without which Yemen’s economy
would collapse.

Saudi Arabia has also made good on only about half of its
$3.2 billion commitment to Yemen’s political transition, made in
the feel-good days of the Arab Spring. Other Gulf Cooperation
Council members, including Qatar and Kuwait, have been even more
grudging.

Donor states claim, rightly, that corruption and political
incompetence in Yemen threaten proper use of such funds. But
political change will be slow and fitful; well-meaning donors
should get off the high horse and either support the new
government or find ways to funnel money to more deserving
initiatives.

The U.S., meanwhile, supports the government on one hand --
$345 million in 2012 -- while destabilizing it through its
counterterrorism policies on the other. The roughly 70 drone
strikes since 2009 have killed at least 500 people. Although
perhaps fewer than 10 percent were civilians, the deaths have
outraged Yemeni public opinion and made it increasingly
difficult for tribal and religious opponents of al-Qaeda to
rally their followers.

Gregory D. Johnsen, author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia,” says Yemenis may be partly
assuaged if the U.S. goes after only known terrorists and ends
its campaign of “signature strikes,” in which targets are
selected based on observations of suspicious activity. In
general, killing fewer and capturing more jihadi leaders would
offer both public relations and intelligence-gathering benefits.

“Drone strikes and the targeted killing program have made
my passion and mission in support of America almost impossible
in Yemen,” Al-Muslimi warned the senators. To defeat al-Qaeda,
we must help him succeed.